Lorna Mitchell has posted some preliminary PHP7 benchmarks from the current alpha release (alpha2). Good news - it's fast....very fast.

If you know anything at all about PHP7, you probably know it's fast. But did you know how fast? The alpha is out and looks very robust, so I decided I would create a new set of benchmarks to include it. Graphs first, disclaimers later :)

This graph shows the time it takes for each version of PHP to perform the same task, on average, with oldest PHP on the left and moving forward in time. [..] The benchmark is the Zend/bench.php that lives in the PHP sourcecode (run ten times for each version of PHP using the php7dev VM on an average laptop, and then the mean result for each version calculated). The script runs through a series of taxing algorithms, giving a sense of how quickly a series of computational instructions can be executed.

She also talks briefly about how this can effect more real-world applications, how realistic it is to upgrade from older installs (much less painful on 5.5 or 5.6) and some things you can do to help improve PHP7 for everyone. This includes testing, working on bugs and adding extensions to this list to ensure they're made PHP7 compatible.

On the SitePoint PHP blog a new tutorial shows you how to generate code with Memio, a relatively new PHP-based tool that lets you define "models" as structures for the code you need generated.

Ever thought of writing code responsible for generating certain PHP classes, methods, properties automatically? Read on to get the details on when exactly automatic code generation may be helpful and – what’s most important – how to implement it properly using the Memio library.

He starts with a bit of introduction to the basic concept of code generation and mentions a few places it's currently used. Then he gets into the examples, starting with a bit of code showing how to get Twig loaded and injected into the Memio instance. From there he shows a simple example of creating a class with a single method and single line of code. With the basics understood, he gets into a more "real world" example of generating ORM classes with getters and setters for the different properties/column names.

An announcement has been made about an new entry into the PHP community world - the PHP Community Conference happening in Nashville, TN (April 21st and 22nd):

The PHP Community Conference is all about you! Come on out to Nashville for a different kind of conference this spring. We're going to hear from community members about projects they're working on and how they were inspired. It's going to be a fun, laid-back event where you and the people you'll meet can collaborate to build some awesome applications of your own with PHP. Ticket sales will begin on February 3, 2011.

Their Call for Papers is already open and will stay open until January 31st - less than 20 days away! They're looking for topics that focus less of the technical how-to you might find at other conferences and more on the "real world" happenings and projects the PHP community is working on. Speakers will have airfare and hotel costs paid for. To submit a proposal, send it in an email over to proposals@phpcon.org today!

Doug Hill has proposed a new project that he hopes to get the community behind - 60 Days:

60 Days is an idea I had while trying to decide what to do with the domains I have sitting around doing nothing — (well nothing but being a nagging reminder that I'll never have time for every idea that pops into my head, and that domain names cost money to keep).

The goal of the project is to take a domain you're not currently using (and you know you have some out there) and making something - a "real world project" - on it in 60 days. the catch is that, for each domain you use for the effort, it has to be a different PHP framework. Keep an eye out for the January 1 launch date for more details.